Embodiments herein generally relate to printing devices and more particularly to printing devices that are location-aware or that are equipped with location information that can be manually or automatically entered, and to systems and methods for establishing and refining the physical position of such printing devices.
As mobile printing and location-aware portable devices, such as smart phones, become more prevalent, it is desirable to be able to find unfamiliar printers and multi-function printing devices (MFDs) as the location information of these printing devices (that is stored along with the name, internet-protocol (IP) address and other forms of identification of the printing device) become more widely available.
While printing devices are generally not mobile devices (although they can be relocated occasionally) it is becoming more common for such devices to contain location information (which can be a street location, a latitude-longitude location, internal building location, etc). Such location information is utilized by the portable computing devices to identify the closest printing device when the portable computing device needs to perform a print job.
While most printer/multi-function printing devices do not have a built in GPS, when the printing device is initially placed in a certain the location coordinates can be estimated (using an external GPS device) and stored within the printing device. However, due to the signal strength of GPS signals, especially within a building, only rough location estimates can be made in a single measurement.